This invention relates to a simulation of a telephone handset and in particular to a simulation tool for use as an aid to the development, testing and demonstration of interactive voice response (IVR) applications.
End users typically interact with Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems using a telephone handset across a telephone network. An IVR system running a telephony application is physically connected to a telephone switch (possibly public) using a Network Interface (NIF) adapter card or similar hardware. End user telephone handsets can be connected directly or indirectly (through a telephone network) to this switch. Voice Processing adapter cards are used to provide the applications with the capability to play (and record) voice and to recognize DTMF tones. Optionally, the IVR system can use Voice Recognition (VR) and Text-to-Speech (TTS) to provide the applications with the capability to recognize words spoken by an end user and to speak to an end user by synthesizing speech (from text).
Like other software applications, telephony applications require development, testing and demonstration before being made available to end users. During development, the telephony application must be programmed to present information to the end user (for example stored voice prompts) and accept instructions from the end user (for example recognize that they selected a particular number on the telephone number keypad). During testing and demonstration, the developer needs to verify that the telephony application presents information to and accepts instructions from the end user telephone handset in the desired way. Typically such testing and demonstration will take place at the development site on a fully functioning telephony voice application either on a stand alone telephony application development platform or at an established client""s site where the necessary hardware is already installed. Although well established and in common use this practice is restricted such that developers normally have to work on a single development platform in the last stages of development leading to bottlenecks in the development process. Furthermore prospective clients may be inconvenienced by having to attend a site where such hardware exists.
A product that allows development, test and demonstration of telephony application without a telephony card installed in the PC is SimPhone from Parity Software. This product requires the use of a sound card and there is no facility for graphically viewing the voice prompts.
According to one aspect there is provided a system for developing a voice processing telephony application comprising
a telephony emulator adapted to intercept signals from the application intended for telephony hardware and sending signals to the application thereby simulating signals from telephony hardware; and
a user interface adapted to provide user output in response to the emulator and accept and pass on user input to the emulator.
According to a second aspect there is provided a method of testing a telephony application in a voice processing system comprising:
replacing the telephony hardware interface with an emulator interface adapted to intercept signals from the application intended for the telephony hardware and sending signals to the application thereby simulating signals from the telephony hardware; and
providing a user interface adapted for user output in response to the emulator and for accepting user input and passing such input to the emulator.
By providing a software simulation of a telephone handset which can run on a Personal Computer (PC) without telephony hardware or an audio device, and which is capable of representing the input and output of a telephone handset, IVR application development, test and demonstration is simplified.
The costs (monetary, time and effort) associated with the installation, configuration and use of telephony adapter cards and a telephone switch could be, at the very least, postponed, and at the very most, never incurred.
Along with the rest of the software tools required to develop an IVR application, the software simulation of a telephone handset is able to run on a Notebook sized PC. The portability of a Notebook PC means that IVR application development, testing and demonstration is no longer constrained to a telephone connected office.